


One Step, Two

by efnisien



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/efnisien/pseuds/efnisien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the world, you take your comfort where you can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step, Two

In the rags of apocalypse, the wind scoured the streets of ash and grime and dust. Faith watched through narrowed eyes, hair bannering behind her, as the lights of another car far below sputtered out. She forced herself to listen for the screams, for the day she no longer noticed was the day she was dead. The sky was black splashed with the sun's red corona, the helter-skelter scattering of the brightest stars through the smog. Sometimes, when she drowsed, she thought she smelled flowers. She knew how ridiculous that was.

One footstep, two. Faith whirled. The chain on her leg scraped but faintly against the concrete.

Angelus smiled lazily at her. "Are you cold?" he asked with false solicitousness. Without waiting for her to answer, he slipped off his leather jacket and slung it around her shoulders.

Faith suffered this without hitting him, without attempting to trip him with the chain, without anything more than a low-lidded, hostile stare. In days past she had tried all these things. None of them had gotten her anything. If she had persisted, she would not have survived. And if there was one thing Faith could do, it was survive.

Angelus kissed her brow, kissed her earlobe, traced the curve of her jaw with his fingertip ending at the side of her mouth. Even through this Faith held still. Held her breath. She wasn't so desperate as to seek warmth from a walking corpse.

Even so, in her dreams he was warm. Not warm in the way of flesh, but warm like warm; warm like the red fire in the sky, which burned without bringing comfort. She was almost sure that he didn't know about the dreams.

To Faith's surprise, Angelus produced a dented silver key and bent over her foot. One twist, two, and the fetters fell free.

Faith, not being an idiot, sprang back, crouching. But she didn't run. "Okay," she said, her voice scratchy with distrust, "what's the catch?"

Angelus paced back and forth before her. She couldn't hear his footsteps, not over the keening of the wind and the punctuating screams. He was graceful and maddeningly relaxed. Never good news for her. "No catch," he said. "Just an offer."

Surreptitiously, Faith tensed and untensed the muscles in the leg that had been shackled. She could feel the ghost-touch of the metal where her calluses and sores were. "You don't make offers," Faith said, blackly certain.

"You're the last Slayer in my city," Angelus said. "I make exceptions for you."

Faith was not an introspective person. She had spent little time wondering what Angelus meant to do with her, mainly because there weren't any pleasant answers to that question. But she knew what he did with his prey. Even now she wasn't sure what it meant that he tortured them and fed from them out of her sight. She had become intimately familiar with an orchestra of sounds that the human body was not meant to produce: the percussion of broken bones, the glissades of tearing flesh, and always, always the screams and pleas and shouts.

"So what's the offer?" Faith said at last, ready to bolt. In the back of her head she was aware that he had broken her a little already; that she wasn't running when any sane person should run.

But she was a Slayer, the fallen city's only Slayer. And if she turned her back on him now, no one would be available to held him in check.

_Yeah,_ Faith thought, _because I've been doing such a great job at that already._

Angelus walked toward her, one step, two. Stopped at a respectful distance, just precisely out of reach if she lunged. He said, "I'll stop torturing them."

Faith wasn't stupid: she noticed he didn't offer to stop eating people. "And...?" she said.

_Now_ he moved. She was fast, but not fast enough. No matter how good a Slayer's constitution was, she hadn't been eating well for weeks, and there was only so much training you could do while chained to a wall. She yelped as he swept out her legs from underneath her, tried to twist so her head didn't bang into the rooftop so hard--and found herself trapped, caught by his hands a bare inch from injury.

Angelus said in her ear, "Tell me you don't want this, too." He was half-laughing. "You've always wondered what Buffy's first time was like, haven't you? I can do that for you." His voice gentled. "Faith--" He said her name like a prayer to the morning sun. Caught her hands, raised one to his lips despite the grime and sweat and scars.

Faith didn't make the mistake of squeezing her eyes shut; it would only have made the illusion more complete.

"I am what I am, but they can die quickly--cleanly--"

Faith was also a lot better at self-knowledge than she used to be. She wanted him; wanted this. If not this, then some other game of his dead heart's devising, chains and black smiles and brutal kisses.

The moment's hesitation was signal enough, in a language they both knew.

"Here," Angelus said, helping her up. "Hot bath, maybe? Clean the ash off your soul?"

"It's too late for that," Faith said.

This time when he kissed her, she curved toward him like a brushstroke. They didn't make it to the bath until much later. As she rode him, she lost count of the screams from below. Later, she promised herself just before she cried out herself. Later.


End file.
